


Ask, and It Shall Be Given

by morosophe



Series: Endless Talking [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Sentinel
Genre: Crossover, Fluff, Gen, No I mean FLUFF, Sentinel/Guide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-10 00:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4370318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morosophe/pseuds/morosophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you"  (Matthew 7:7, KJV)</p><p>...in which there is knocking, and seeking, and a vital question goes unasked but not unanswered.</p><p>Or, a much-needed tête-à-tête between Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask, and It Shall Be Given

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, asking and being given can also happen when you badger an author in your reviews. I hope this doesn't disappoint all the lovely people who commented on [Telling Tales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4331211)! (Note: This story won't make much sense if you haven't read that one.)

Foggy knew that Matt knew he was there. Then again, if he hadn't expected this visit long before they even left the office, Foggy wasn't sure who Matt thought he was kidding. 

He'd been so excited when Blair explained things, just knowing that this finally made Matt's “world on fire” something close to comprehensible. He felt like he'd caught enthusiasm from Blair, who clearly loved what his partner could do, and the betrayal he'd still felt from when Matt finally explained things to him had faded a little more as he'd realized that Matt wasn't the only one who felt the urge to keep his supersenses secret; there was a whole government department that had classified them, after all. He had kept getting more and more into Blair's lecture, and even as he tried to keep from jumping to conclusions, each point in it seemed to confirm that Matt was a sentinel (the migraines! the silk sheets! the times when he'd check out of reality for a little while! his inability to ignore the sirens!), and he almost blurted the whole thing out.

And then his partner had spoken, and Foggy had caught a glimpse of his face. He had seen that expression a few times before, and he never wanted to see it again. The first time was when his roommate learned that he had been shipped the wrong textbook for a course, and that getting the correct one in Braille would take weeks, weeks in which Matt had papers due and lectures he wouldn't be able to contribute to properly. It was the look that meant, “My tightly controlled world is falling apart, but I'm going to hide that as best I can.” After that, Foggy deliberately kept any thoughts of Matt and sentinels separate, despite knowing exactly who must have warded Hell's Kitchen.

He had continued to follow Matt's lead while they were in front of other people, all the while determined to catch him in private later. Now that they could be alone, they were going to _talk_. Foggy shifted the six pack of imported beer in his hands so that he could better knock loudly on the door to the penthouse apartment. Matt didn't answer, and Foggy knocked again, even more loudly. He wasn't going to let Matt ignore him this time!

Even if Matt was out as Daredevil, again. Which he probably was. Not only to “defend his city,” but to avoid this very conversation. In which case, Foggy was just going to stand here all night, knocking. Except that he'd start drinking the beers, the weird ones he'd gotten, that he knew Matt would actually drink, and Matt's punishment would be that he'd have to have this conversation knowing that he was short some beer by smelling it on Foggy's breath. That seemed fair.

Foggy had turned around and was just about to sit down and start drinking when the door opened next to him. Matt looked... Matt looked pretty bad, still. Had he gone up against a ninja again, or something? But he was still wearing the suit he'd worn that day at the office, so he probably hadn't even gone and punched people in his little costume. Why did he look like he was in pain, then? Did the revelation that there were other people out there who could do what he could hurt him that much? Foggy had thought he'd have time to absorb that fact, and maybe even be relieved that he wasn't as much of an outlier as he'd thought. Then again, Foggy mused bitterly, since he seemed to think Daredevil was so much more important than Matt Murdock, maybe he resented not being quite so special. Or maybe, remembering Blair's lecture from earlier in the day, he'd just had a zone, or spiked, or whatever. It could always be that, too. _Maybe I should stop guessing and start asking,_ he thought, as he followed Matt into the apartment.

“So, what's up, bud?” he asked. Sometimes he wondered whether Matt even bothered listening to what he said; it must all be so predictable by now, and what with all the senses, Matt was plenty familiar with him in ways he would never know Matt. Still, nothing was going to stop Foggy from talking, as his mother could tell you. “'Cause in case you hadn't realized it, you look as bad off as the last time I came to visit. Except this time, I'm bringing you beer, instead of stealing it!” He lifted the six pack to accentuate his statement, then dropped it on the kitchen counter and waited for a response.

“Nothing, nothing's wrong, Foggy,” Matt insisted. Huh, it turned out that Foggy did know Matt better than he thought, if Matt had thought that that would work. He just stayed silent, waiting for an actual answer to his question. Matt folded like a cheap card table. “Okay, I just finished telling Mr. Ellison about, about the Pied Piper.”

Foggy wondered if this “Pied Piper” had been involved in the human trafficking Matt had told him about, or had been connected to Fisk, or if there had been some other encounter Matt had never told him about that had led to him making all of Hell's Kitchen off-limits to other sentinels. (He tried to banish any thought of Matt marking his territory like a dog would.) He was about to ask when Matt belatedly finished his sentence with “...or as I knew him, Stick.”

Stick. Stick. That rang a bell. Wait a minute, the blind old man that had taught Matt how to fight, who had made him recognize that his blindness wasn't the end of the world? His _Kung-Fu_ -style mentor? That Stick was the same guy wanted by the FBI and Interpol, and, not incidentally, Dr. Blair Sandburg for exploiting children, for molding them and using them as soldiers in some kind of unknown war, for teaching them to live without trusting anyone else?

Foggy sat down hard as that fact impacted. Viewed through that prism, the way Matt lived his life almost made sense. Foggy thought of the kid Blair had talked about, the kid who was in, like, a nursing home in Norway or whatever, and flinched at the thought that that could have been Matt. Good thing Matt was smarter than that, and had dumped this guy before he'd dug too deep into his psyche.

And none of this had anything to do with the real reason he had come. “So, Matt,” he said, deciding not to wander down that rabbit trail, “let's talk about what Blair said about guides.”

“I'm sorry, Foggy,” Matt said, his head still facing the door he had shut on the beers, so that Foggy couldn't see his expression. “I didn't mean to do that to you. I hadn't even realized I had done that, until today. I'm sorry.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Matt, enough with the guilt!” Foggy exclaimed. “What in the world are you apologizing for?”

“How I've been using you as a guide,” Matt answered, as if it were obvious. Where in the world was this coming from? Foggy felt like he'd missed a few steps in this conversation, somehow.

“But I haven't been doing any of that, that stuff he was saying,” Foggy protested. “You know, helping you when your senses get too much, and making sure you don't zone or spike, or whatever. Hey, it took me forever to remember to keep our dorm room picked up when we lived together, despite the fact that it was obvious you needed that.”

“Foggy, you've advocated for every need I've ever let you know about,” Matt insisted, turning to face Foggy. He ignored Foggy's exclamation of “Avocado!” to continue, “I was just talking with, with Blair on the phone, once I'd finished giving Mr. Ellison all the information I have about Stick. He insisted that guides are _important_ , and that there's a little more to them than he told us today. It's not that he was lying to us, just that he focused on the parts that had to do with the breach of contract we were discussing. He told me,” Matt said, gesturing with the phone he had removed from his pocket, “that a guide provides a baseline that a sentinel can always return to, and I knew exactly what he meant, because after I lost my sight, my dad became the foundation to my world. When I lost him...”

Matt stopped and swallowed, and Foggy decided to allow him to drop the sentence without pushing. So, of course, he picked it up again, “...the only thing I've ever found as painful as that was when you left, and I knew I'd betrayed you so much you would never come back. Compared to that, Stick leaving was nothing.” And of course, of course the man Matt had considered a mentor, who had probably replaced his father a little as a guide, a, what, a foundation to his world, of course he had dumped Matt, not the other way around. Hadn't Blair said that was his M.O., abandoning kids he found useless? Foggy was still thankful that it had happened before he turned out like that kid in Norway. But Matt _kept on talking_.

“And, and the way I had such a hard time getting anything done after that, like with the heroin smugglers? From what Blair said, I have yet another reason to be grateful you were willing to put up with me before Fisk escaped, or I'd probably never have caught him.

“None of this is fair to you, Foggy,” he added. “I, I was always so proud of myself, how much I could manage without asking for other people's help. And here it turns out that I've been, been clinging to you like some kind of parasite. You never asked for that, either.” Matt grimaced at the echo of their earlier argument.

Okay, that was enough. “Objection,” Foggy told him. “Counsel is assuming facts not in evidence. Or maybe the witness is incompetent. Particularly since I have a feeling I'm listening to _Stick_ , here.” Delightfully, this actually produced a laugh, though it was short and bitter. Had Foggy maybe managed to short-circuit Matt's Catholic self-flagellation a little? Just in time to start in on his own, judging by his reaction to that description of life when Foggy had abandoned the guy with abandonment issues out the wazoo. 

“I don't think anyone who knows him has ever called Stick incompetent.”

Foggy ignored this to press on. “Matt, from what Blair said at the office, having a guide is kind of a, a basic need for a sentinel. Just like having people you can trust is a basic need for sanity. It doesn't make you a parasite. It makes you a person. And now you're beating yourself up over, what, coming to rely on me? That's the biggest compliment you've ever paid me, buddy.”

“But Blair said there was this whole spiritual side to it, too. I can't exactly discount that, since Jim Ellison could tell he wasn't welcome in Hell's Kitchen _somehow_. What if, what if I've been depleting you spiritually, or something?”

“Aren't you Catholic? What's your God have to say about all of this, buddy? Come on, I know you know this one, even I've read far enough in the Bible to have hit it. God creates Adam, and then what does he say? It is not good for man to...” 

Matt thought about it for a moment, and then added, reluctantly, “live alone.” Huh. Foggy had thought that verse ended “be alone.” Must be a Catholic thing.

“Hey, I think I'd trust Him over Stick, or whatever made-up mumbo-jumbo you're inventing now. And I have to say, of all the people I've ever seen, Blair is probably the least depleted spiritually. Man, if it can make me look that good at fifty, sign me up for permanent guide duty, Matt!”

And finally, finally, Matt relaxed, aware that there really wasn't any reason to punish himself. Foggy privately thanked Catholic God, and went on. “And besides, I came here today to sign up for guide duty, or assistant guide duty, or whatever. This whole sentinel thing made me scared for you in a whole new way. Or not entirely new, since I've always worried about your headaches and the times you'd space out for no reason, but what Blair said to me today made me realize that there was something I could do to help you. You don't have to worry about enlisting me, Matt, because I was always going to volunteer. Whatever position you have open, Matt. Secretary, no, wait, administrative assistant to the guide? Unpaid intern?”

"Foggy, who in the world else would I trust to be my guide? Karen? Claire? Who else would even want the position? It was always going to be you, even if you weren't already doing it." And there was the big sap that, Foggy finally acknowledged, he knew better than anyone else in the world.

Matt looked like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Well, it had been a crazy day for him. Foggy decided to save him having to decide by guiding Matt's face to his shoulder as he hugged him like he was never going to let him go again. He still felt betrayed by the fact that Matt had kept all of this secret for so long, but it had stopped hurting quite so much. Turns out, it really was impossible to stay mad at Matt. The only person Foggy knew who could manage it was his partner.

You may have heard of him? Matthew M. Murdock. Vigilante, sentinel, and avocado-at-law.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review! I would love to get comments, even if I did manage to end on a better note this time.
> 
> (Okay, yes, a sappy note, even. Sorry!)


End file.
